Intuitively, the idea of global value chains (GVCs) is relatively easy to understand - making a product or delivering a service involves many steps and increasingly these steps are separable and can be located anywhere in the world based on where it is most efficient to perform. Formalizing this...

We develop a property-rights model of the firm in which production entails a continuum of uniquely sequenced stages. In each stage, a final-good producer contracts with a distinct supplier for the procurement of a customized stage-specific component. Our model yields a sharp characterization for...

Measuring international competitiveness is a highly contested issue in contemporary economics. The emergence of global value chains limits the accuracy of traditional export-based measures and calls for the employment of techniques capable of accounting for value added input of individual...

In the past 15 years there has been an expansion in world trade accompanied by a growing international fragmentation of production, which has given rise to the so-called “global value chains” (GVCs). This new way of organising production at the international level means that countries...